Ballast
by binkeybella
Summary: A bit of a fractured, tossed-up ode to Ellie Bishop, because I just adore her, and not just because she replaced someone I didn't.


**Not beta'd. All mistakes belong to my laptop.**

.He barely remembers the ones that came before her, the temporary ones, at least. He was intent on finding beauty without substance, or at least without an agenda, so he had quickly flipped through the stack of HR files Gibbs had dropped on his desk and picked out the prettiest ones, regardless of their qualifications. Hell, if they hadn't been qualified, Gibbs wouldn't have given him their names, much less their entire dossiers. So what did it matter that Tony chose them for their looks if his boss was giving him carte blanche, with the implied threat that McGee was certainly to have a say in the process.

In the end, none of them stayed, either driven off by Tony's immature behavior, McGee's dithering between chastising Tony or letting the man wear himself out, or Gibbs's constant bitching at them all.

It was never easy working for the volatile man, and Ziva's decision to leave the team and seek a life of contemplative regret had thrown him for a loop that curved downwards to guilt and self-pity all the way up to anger and betrayal. He had put his life on the line for her, her team had tossed away their careers, only to find out that she had hunted down and killed the wrong man in her blind thirst for revenge. And in the end, she had left them. In the end, her own wants were more important than the team she claimed as family.

He missed her, and was angry at her and hurt and lost, feeling abandoned by yet another daughter.

And he took it out on what was left of his team.

McGee had back slid into yammering instead of taking a breath and collecting himself in the face of Gibbs's heat. Tony had taken up where his boss left off in the functional mute department, doing his job efficiently and quietly, without the added 'pah', as he liked to call it. That in itself had driven Gibbs to yet higher heights of irritation. Was Tony blaming _him_ for the whole Bodnar mess and Ziva's exit? Was there something that he had missed in the team dynamics that spoke of something more than partners?

In his heart, he knew better; not only would DiNozzo not defy his edict on team romance right under his nose, but he knew deep down that his second's feelings for the Israeli, while defying most descriptions, were not romantic. DiNozzo had done nothing wrong, in fact he had tried to keep the rest of them from their bad judgment calls, and gotten sucked up into their spiraling, unsanctioned plot anyways. He had been the ultimate example of Semper Fi, and still it hadn't been enough.

There were days when Gibbs looked at him as if he either wanted to roast him alive or have him transferred to the field office in Pakistan. Or both, as that could possibly happen to him in Karachi.

So Tony took the low road for one of the few times in his life, and decided that perhaps someone attractive would not only distract him, but be a little less driven to climb over the top of him to get and keep a place on the team. Not that his retired team mate hadn't been attractive; that, he could never claim. But right along with her exotic allure, came a stark inner ugliness that had shocked then numbed him, and in the end, left a trail of destruction in its wake.

He had expected her to be sharp edges and severe turns, and puzzles with no solutions, but he hadn't expected it all to be turned against him. He was also used to teasing and banter in the art of working partners, after all, he was a master sculptor himself. Cate had risen to his bait time after time, rarely realizing he was doing it to see her get her panties in a wad. For a profiler, she had bee clueless about a lot of things with him, but...she had never been cruel. A jab to the ribs with an elbow, chronic whining to Gibbs to make him stop, sometimes a badly-timed barb that went deeper than she probably intended – but never out and out cruelty.

She'd been a really good partner and friend, until the day he went home with her blood and brain matter in his hair.

And he's never quite been able to get past that day, that loss, that relationship. An older sister more than anything, though just barely two years older than him.

Ziva had been neither of those. She had been many things to him over the years, but never a sister, and not even a really good partner. What sort of even _decent _partner takes you out at the knees, literally, and in a fit of grief-fueled rage, holds a loaded gun to your chest? He'd never told Gibbs about it, though he always thought the older man had suspected, or had been out-right told by a witness and then never let on that he knew. Tony always wondered, if Gibbs did know, did he think he'd provoked and deserved it?

That had been the real beginning of the end for Tony when it came to harboring anything akin to complete trust for the woman. Hell, he wasn't even sure she'd cover his six out in the field, much less keep his confidences and secrets. Whatever fragile ties they had before Michael Rivkin entered their sphere had been firmly severed. And what hurt the most was no one ever asked him why. But they didn't hesitate to allow him to go off on a tear to seek vengeance when he believed she was dead. It was what friends did for each other, even though he was pretty sure she wouldn't have done the same for him. _"He is dead._" he could hear her declare cooly. "_What more is there to do, it will not bring him_ _back."_

After that, it was months of skirmishes and ceasefires, all-out battles and weary truces. The playful teasing continued, but he took it at face value, as he knew that it was very probable that within the next hour, she would be insulting him in front of his superiors with no regards to his feelings or the awkward position that left him in. And she knew it, too. Standing up for himself, he would come across as a childish whiner. Not standing up for himself and she had him just where she wanted, a prat who let a slip of a woman emasculate him in front of God and bosses. God, it hurt him, every bit of it, but never as much as the fact that Gibbs stayed silent regarding her behavior, which to her was a clear signal to go full speed ahead and let fly from her mouth whatever she wanted to say, insubordination be damned.

He stayed in spite of it all. He had nowhere else to go. Passing on the Rota promotion and begging to be released from Agent Afloat, both jobs most NCIS agents would have killed for, had gotten him some not so flattering labels, mostly by Leon Vance, and when Vance wanted to be a bastard, he could give Gibbs a good run for his bourbon money. He had Tony where he wanted him, as a patsy for his cronies and bosses to use undercover their unpleasant power plays. Vance considered DiNozzo expendable, there was no doubt in Tony's mind about that. Why waste a perfectly fine agent like McGee or his ilk, when there's one he couldn't wait to get rid of?

So, nowhere else to go was pretty much his foreseeable future, unless he wanted to dump everything he had worked and sacrificed for a cut in pay and loss of government benefits. He'd decided to tough it out, figuring the devil he knew was better than the one he didn't, especially at his age. He'd developed a pretty thick skin in his years with Gibbs, and thanks to the last woman who had sat at the desk across from him, an ability to tune out an awful lot of criticism. Joining the men's support group had been one of the best decisions he'd ever made, and he'd only regretted not finding it sooner.

McGee had ragged on him about it, which Tony knew full well he would, but the older man had held his tongue, something the support group had been trying to help him with. Had he fallen back into his age-old habits, he would have returned with a snarky remark to the fact that at least _he_ was trying to improve himself, unlike the rest of his team, who never found any problem gleefully pointing out his faults while blissfully blind to their own glaring shortcomings.

In the end, the all-male MCRT had burned through the field of hopeful replacement candidates at record speed, ending with the sharp-tongued Vera Srickland, who ended her career on a low note after nearly being run down by a car with a fleeing suspect behind the wheel. Tony had pushed her out of the way, but she had ended up on crutches anyways, and Tony had found yet another enemy. Just what he needed. He had not asked McGee to be idiotically irresponsible and lose his ID, he had not asked that Vera be his new unhappy partner. It was days like that he seriously considered becoming a private investigator. Private, as in, by himself, no one waiting breathlessly for the next kick to his crotch.

He wondered if they were destined to be a three-man team, no matter how relentlessly Vance dogged Gibbs about placing a fourth member. He didn't actually care one way or the other, except that training a probie in the Ways of Gibbs might take some of the focus off himself.

Just when he was about to give up all hope, fate intervened and crossed their path with Eleanor Bishop, an NSA analyst who was on fire to help solve the case of treason in the form of a ordinary, everyday object – a pen, which had been bugged and placed on the Secretary of the Navy. 'Ellie' had made a few missteps in her eagerness to find her co-worker's killer, but Gibbs had nonetheless been impressed with her, and as a parting gift of thanks, offered her a part time slot on the team.

McGee had informed Tony the next morning that Bishop was the latest Gibbs experiment, to which Tony had hid the smile from his face, but grinned inwardly like a cat who had just eaten the canary and drank the cream to wash it down.

"Huh. That's nice. She'll do fine."

"Really?" McGee turned to him with mistrust in his eyes. "That's all you have to say about it? That's nice?"

"Well, Tim, considering the laundry list of agents we've driven out of here, how excited do you want me to get?" 

"We didn't drive them out of here, they were just pansies."

"Spoken from the mouth of the man who all but peed his pants every time Gibbs looked at him, much less gave him the Death Star glare."

"I was a rookie, Tony, a probie, I didn't stay that way."

"Nope, you didn't. And Ms. Bishop is a mile ahead of you out of the starting gate. She'll do fine."

"She's not Ziva, Tony." McGee added sullenly, not willing to let it drop.

"No, she certainly isn't, is she, McObvious? Care to elaborate?"

"She's – well, she's just not."

Tony took that as a good enough answer and went back to his paperwork. He knew that McGee would never tell him what was really on his mind, why it was so difficult for him to think about a team without Ziva David or a clone of her. In the short time that Bishop had worked with them, she had not given any indication of whose 'side' she was on in the game of bullpen politics. Or that she was on

'any' side at all, other than the right one.

She'd not denigrated, insulted or attempted to shame Tony, or marginalize him to the point of him feeling invisible. There'd been no chance for Tim to join forces with her to plot Tony's downfall, or even their latest plans to exclude him from their secret club. (No DiNozzos allowed in our tree house. Even Dad said so.) Tony knew that had come as a shock to McGee, something the younger man hadn't considered in the confusion and turmoil of Ziva's unexpected exit. Tim suddenly had no one to follow, or hide behind, as Tony felt was most often the case. With Ziva David as your leader, who _wouldn't_ be bold and brassy?

It had demoralized McGee to be without an ally, never realizing that Tony had been his best ally for the last eight plus years, and he had been hoping to pick up again where he'd left off before the Bodnar disaster. But it seemed no one was interested, at least not those agents who had held out any hope of staying on the team. They'd been too busy trying to please the unpleasable Gibbs – not too strong, not tooweak, not too much talk, but not a mouse, either. Who the hell could figure out where the middle was with that man?

Ellie Bishop had had no problem finding it, mainly because she wasn't looking for it. She was looking at the puzzle, the pieces, the odd-shaped answers, and it had never occurred to her to behave any way than what she already was.

And Tony adored her for it. He had found a kindred spirit in the young woman; like him, she could grab random, obscure facts from who the hell knew where and make them fit where they belonged. Gibbs had once admired and praised him for that, but now it was simply taken for granted, expected without thought. Bishop could not only take up some of the slack for Tony's weary, over-picked brain, but do it with humor and grace, and best of all, do it without malice or cutthroat intent. She wanted what was best for the case, for the team, no personal agenda allowed other than giving her personal best. The totally guileless young woman was so unexpected and welcomed, Tony might have wept with joy had he any tears left to do it.

Perhaps the most miraculous thing of all was the courtesy and kindness she extended to him. She extended it to them all, to everyone she met, it was simply her nature, but – he'd seen his entire team, Gibbs included, spend entire days going out of their way to comfort and cheer a fellow employee or crime victim, and then with no hesitation, turn on him with fury for some misplaced word or look taken as an affront. Dry drunks, he had called them to himself, even though he knew only Gibbs had ever had questionable drinking habits. It kept him on pins and needles wondering what he would say or do to set one or all of them off, until his psyche couldn't handle it anymore and he'd learned to tune out their responses, bad or good.

He didn't have to with Ellie. She listened to everything he said, processed it in milliseconds in her computer-like brain, and sorted out the junk from what he was actually trying to say. She understood him without even trying, without thinking about it. She knew what it was like to not be understood, to blurt out the first thing that came into her head, which though made complete sense in her brain, didn't necessarily translate so well into words, or at least _her_ words. Ellie Bishop read him like Cate the profiler never had, like McGee the computer-geek couldn't, and like the emotionally closed-down Ziva and Gibbs just plain wouldn't.

For once, he had an actual, true friend on the team. Abby had been that at one time, but her allegiances and agendas had tended to waiver over the years, and like with the rest of the team, Tony never knew when her shifting moods were going to be for or against him. At forty-something, the lab goth could still behave like a hormonal teenager, and as much as he loved her, he felt he'd lost that special something he'd had with her the first few years he'd been on the team. Maybe that's as long as it would last with Bishop, but he wasn't willing to look that far ahead. There were too many variables in their careers and lives, and predictions for them were never a good thing.

One day at a time now was all he needed, one more day with someone who took the time to build him up instead of tear him to shreds. Their recent trip to his old high school had been one of the toughest times of his career, opening old wounds and inflicting fresh ones on top of them upon finding his mentor had covered up heinous cadet behavior in the supposed name of honor. No heroes left in his life, just a bitter taste left in his mouth that he could have been so gullible to put so much faith into any human being. He knew no one was perfect, but he had expected more from some when he clearly shouldn't have. It had not only hurt deeply, but shaken his self-worth in being able to read people, to think he could really know them.

Through it all Ellie Bishop had remained steadfast and loyal, lending support without judgment or criticism. Tony couldn't even contemplate the utter disaster it would have been had he been sent there with Ziva; the mere thought of it very nearly made him start to hyperventilate. The quiet strength provided by Bishop would quite simply have been a cacophony of prying questions, nagging scolds, and an all-out campaign to make him see the continued error of his ways -surely somehow all that happening now was his fault for what he didn't do back then, no? She would have showed him every clue that he had stupidly, selfishly missed as a self-absorbed basketball star, and in the dark frame of mind he was already in, he would have listened to her and then believed it himself. She would have done it for no other reason than that she had the power to do it, and then been smug ever after that she had found his breaking point. He wasn't stupid, he knew there were things he should have done differently in those days, but he was old and wise enough to also know that he was a struggling, mixed-up teenager who'd been tossed from pillar to post by an uncaring father, and had done the best he could with what he'd been dealt with.

It would have been a far cry from Bishop's sneaking a picture of him as a flag holder and sweetly declaring him dashing, And much, much farther from his new partner's sincere pronouncement that the experiences of his RMA past had made him the awesome guy that he was today. There was no amount of praise or 'atta boy's from Gibbs that could have rivaled the way Bishop had made him feel with that one, simple statement uttered as fact. He'd given up on his perpetually pissed off and territorial boss ever providing even the smallest amount of accolades for Tony's jobs well done.

That particular ship had set sail the day a certain Israeli liaison officer had wormed her way into Gibbs's affections and replaced what had belonged to Tony, a battle strategy that Tony had figured out far too late to try to remedy. That same ship had veered off course and wrecked itself beyond repair when Ziva had chosen to leave them and return to Israel for good, and that, by _his_ reckoning anyway, Gibbs blamed him for not being able to convince her to come back to them – or that in Tony's anger and resentment for wreaking the team, he had obviously said something to hurt her deeply that she wouldn't confess to her surrogate father Gibbs.

Whatever it was, it was done, and the unease between the two men remained, with Gibbs knowing damned well why he was behaving the way he did, and Tony only guessing at a dozen possible scenarios. He didn't hang out in Gibbs's basement anymore, or come by after work for cowboy steak. The man hadn't invited him, and his stand-offish treatment of the past several months had not encouraged Tony inviting himself. The hurt of that had eased somewhat with Tony finding the men's support group where he could share what he couldn't even with Gibbs – mainly because a lot of his angst and frustration was centered around the man himself; there was no way in hell he was going to poke that bear with even a dull stick.

And while he didn't, and wouldn't, pour his heart out to his newest team mate, she provided a one-person, on-the-job support group for him. Ellie Bishop was his own private cheering section, offering wit and wisdom that he would never have expected from someone with such an analytical background. She made him smile, and most of all, gave him a reason to want to come to work now, something that for the last few years, he had struggled with.

So when she came to work this morning and found a fresh bouquet on her desk from one of D.C.'s most exclusive florists, he gifted her with one of his rare true DiNozzo smiles. And she smiled back knowingly at him, understanding the sentiment behind the gesture without resorting to accusations of some sort of bribery, or worse, misplaced romance. She 'got' him, and let him know that she 'got' him, and for that, Tony would buy out the florist _and_ candy store for her if she asked him to. But she wouldn't. She would just continue to be Eleanor Bishop, ex-NSA analyst and present MCRT probie.

And Tony's secret weapon to staying afloat and on course in the stormy waters that were Team Gibbs.

.


End file.
